Plague World Page 8

  ‘That’s what they said. She died saving Leon and Grace from them. We stumbled upon them not long after they lost her. We were foraging – I was driving. They were on the road and they looked in a pretty bad way. That’s how we met.’

  He hadn’t spared Jennifer much thought during this hell – but she was the mother of the only two reasons he had left to live. That her wellbeing impacted on their wellbeing, hearing that she died . . . saving his kids . . . he realized that was so much more than he’d done for them.

  ‘You OK, Mr Friedmann?’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ He swiped at his face again. He dipped his head. ‘I should have been with them. I should have come over to the UK.’

  ‘It all happened so fast, Mr Friedmann. No one had time to go anywhere.’

  ‘We knew. We had a few hours’ head start on everyone else,’ he muttered. He wiped his eyes dry again and sat up straight. ‘We knew there was no controlling this thing before that became obvious to everyone. I could’ve got across in time. There were still flights taking off.’

  But you didn’t. You stayed put, you selfish asshole.

  Tom coughed again. He managed a flickering smile for the girl. She seemed to be telling him the truth. He wanted to know more about how his kids had been faring. ‘So you took them in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you kept them safe? Looked after them?’

  ‘. . . Yuh.’

  ‘Then I owe you everything, Freya.’

  Her cheeks blotched pink. ‘You don’t need to thank me. We became really close.’

  He studied her. She appeared to be roughly the same age as Leon; were she and him together? She didn’t look like the kind of girl he thought his son would go for. The piercings. Too punky. Too . . .

  What the hell do you know about your son’s preferences, eh? He was just a kid when you last saw him. More interested in computer games than girls.

  He nodded. ‘I’m glad they had you looking after them.’

  ‘Leon looked after us, really,’ she replied. ‘I think he surprised himself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m guessing he was never the alpha-male type?’

  ‘A quiet boy mostly.’ Tom shook his head and laughed. ‘His younger sister’s the bossy one.’

  Freya nodded. ‘Oh, that’s for sure. I know you didn’t see him for a while before the outbreak. I’m guessing he’ll be a different person to you, Mr Friedmann. He’s strong; he’s smart. He’s resilient.’

  ‘If I meet him again.’

  She looked at the papers on his desk. ‘He could be somewhere on one of our ships, right?’

  ‘I’ve been through the manifest. I didn’t see their names. I radioed the other fleet, no sign yet. That’s what I’ve got to hope for now, haven’t I? He took in a deep breath. ‘Now I know they’re still alive.’ He sighed. ‘There’s also a chance they didn’t get on any of the ships in either fleet.’

  ‘Leon’s resourceful.’

  ‘I need to manage my expectations, Freya. You just told me they’ve been alive since the outbreak.’ He pressed his lips together for a moment. ‘When I was beginning to accept they might be dead.’

  ‘Well, they’re not!’

  ‘And you know that for certain?’

  She was hesitant to reply, then finally: ‘I guess I can’t be certain. But Leon’s—’

  ‘But nothing, then.’ He cleared his throat and rubbed at his face again. ‘Much as I’d give anything to, I can’t order the fleet back on just your . . . hope.’

  ‘You’ve got to do something!’

  ‘We’re six days in. Over halfway back. This fleet needs to return to Cuba. We don’t have the supplies or fuel to turn round. We need to drop everyone off, and then . . . Shit!’

  ‘But if they’re not on the other ships they’re stuck back in England!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We have to do something!’

  ‘If they didn’t get on . . . ?’ He sat back in the chair and straightened his aching back. ‘If they’re not with the fleet?’ He shook his head. ‘Then . . .’

  ‘We just give up on them?’

  ‘Then I’ll do something. I’ll figure something out.’

  CHAPTER 15

  Lieutenant Choi Jing pointed at the CCTV monitor. The girl was huddled on the bed, lying on her side, knees drawn up. ‘She is currently resting, sir.’

  ‘I can see that, Lieutenant,’ replied Captain Xien. He stepped towards the small round window and peered through the thick glass so he could see her directly.

  ‘She says maintaining this form, the human form, is tiring. It requires more energy. She has given me a list of ingredients we should add to the glucose solution to help her stay . . . in human shape, sir.’ Jing pointed to some notes he’d made during their last conversation.

  Captain Xien watched her for a while, reminded of a trip to Beijing Zoo when he was seven. His grandparents had taken him to the reptile house to see snakes. Lots of them, doing absolutely nothing. He’d wished he’d been allowed to poke them with a stick to see if they were at least alive and not just plastic replicas.

  ‘I hear that the girl has a developed a level of trust for you, Lieutenant Choi.’

  ‘I speak good English, and I am the only one she sees through that window all the time, sir.’

  Xien nodded. ‘She must be a very frightened child.’

  ‘Sir . . .’

  Xien turned to look at the young officer. He seemed keen to say something more than a yes/no answer, but was at the same time intimidated by Xien’s rank.

  ‘You can speak freely to me, Lieutenant.’

  ‘I believe it is a mistake to think of her as just a child.’

  He peered at the girl’s bare back. ‘She is a child, though, yes?’

  ‘She was, sir. But, in the way she has described herself, it is clear that she is more than what she was.’

  ‘Please explain what you mean by that, Lieutenant Choi.’

  ‘She says she is not just one person. She is many.’ Jing gazed at the flickering TV monitor. ‘She says her current form is that of a girl called Grace. But she contains the minds, the thoughts, of many, many others.’

  ‘Others? Other people?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Others that have been infected. And also . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The virus itself.’

  Xien looked at him. ‘I don’t understand, Lieutenant.’

  ‘She refers to the virus as something separate. Like a teacher, an adviser. She is the most fully “present” person in this collective, but there are parts of other humans. They all listen, with, I sense, a great respect, to the “teacher”. The virus itself.’

  The young man made it sound a bit like a t’ai chi class in there. ‘They listen? You are telling me the virus speaks?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It can speak. It can think. It can reason. It is intelligent, sir.’

  Xien turned to look through the glass at the huddled form on the bed. A little girl draped in a surgical gown, in a bare, clinically lit cell. Any moment now he expected her to lurch to her feet and shuffle her way towards him, croaking and groaning like a horror movie.

  Intelligent? He felt something prickling the skin down his back and realized it was fear. A plague that had wiped out the animal life on the planet in just a few months was a terrifying enough thought. But a plague that was able to think? Maybe even strategize?

  ‘If it can speak, what does it say?’ Xien leaned closer in towards the small window. ‘What does it want?’

  ‘She says it wishes to communicate directly with our . . .’ The young officer peered down at the notes he’d made. He leafed through several pages of his pad and found the characters he’d scrawled earlier. ‘. . . with our highest “hierarchy cluster”.’

  ‘Hierarchy cluster?’ You mean it wants to communicate with our government?’

  Jing nodded, smiled. ‘It is saying “Take Me to Your Leader”.’

  Xien snorted. �
��Will the virus accept me as “leader” and talk to me?’

  ‘The girl, Grace, has explained to the virus that you are in command of this fleet, but that there is a committee above you, sir. A civilian authority.’

  Explained to the virus. Xien narrowed his eyes as he continued to stare at the back of her head through the thick plate glass.

  The virus sounded like a visitor from afar getting to grips with the basics of a complicated indigenous culture. One of the many theories that had been going backwards and forwards in New Zealand before he’d set off on this rescue mission, was that the outbreak hadn’t been something ‘home-grown’, or genetically engineered, but that it was an extra-terrestrial life form. Some dormant microbe that had piggybacked its way across the galaxy on a piece of rock. If that really was what had caused the outbreak, then that speck of life clinging to the side of a ragged chunk of ancient geology represented a First Encounter scenario. The response to the question to which mankind had been seeking an answer forever: Are we alone?

  Well, now, it seemed, they had their answer. He had already broadcast to Cuba that they had a safely contained ‘specimen’ in their fleet, but had yet to receive any kind of response back from the Cubans or their American guests. Perhaps adding that the virus was, in fact, an invading alien entity might stir them into replying.

  ‘Has she said why the virus wishes to talk with us?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Xien wondered whether it understood the concepts of ‘truce’ or ‘surrender’ or even ‘mercy’. Whether it was looking to negotiate a pact, or, like some kind of psychopathic killer, it wanted its victim to hear some form of self-justification before finally slitting its throat.

  ‘Is there a way we can communicate directly with this virus? And not via the girl?’

  Lieutenant Choi shook his head. ‘She has not so far told me a way.’

  ‘Ask her when she wakes up.’ He took one last look at the huddled form on the cot. ‘It is best we have as direct a line of communication with our “alien invader” as possible.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Leon brought the truck to a halt and both he and Jake stared through the windscreen at the layout ahead.

  To the left of the road was a sloping bank of coarse grass that became weed-crested dunes of silt before descending into the cold grey sea. He could see half a dozen small fishing boats, some covered in weathered tarps, bobbing on the choppy water nearby.

  Just ahead, the road became a short bridge. To the right of them he could see a long beach of gravel and mud on which dozens of old paint-flaking dinghies lay upturned, like a row of beached sea lions sunbathing. The water was calmer on that side of the bridge, protected by a long and straight spit of sand in the distance that swung off to their right as far as Leon could see. A sheltered bay.

  Jake had a road map on his lap, his finger jammed down on where they were right now. The small bridge in front of them appeared to be the only connection to a place called the Isle of Portland. From what he could see on the map, it was a small slither of beach that ran parallel to mainland UK and terminated on the right with a blob. They were there – this little bridge the only link.

  ‘Some island,’ said Jake.

  Leon nodded. Not exactly a remote island, but with a strip of seawater thirty metres across isolating it, it was as good as. Everett’s castle had been protected by a moat only ten or so metres wide in some places.

  This was better.

  There was a line running across the small bridge. He let the truck roll slowly forward until finally they could see what it was. A ragged gap. The bridge appeared to have been deliberately breached, either smashed or blown up; either way they were looking at a gap about six metres wide, framed by layers of tarmac, brick, flint and blocks of Portland stone.

  On the far side of the gap was a Portakabin, tucked up against the right-hand-side guard rail. There was an awning outside it, a white plastic garden table and a deckchair whose yellow canvas seat fluttered in the fresh breeze.

  Leon nodded. ‘So how do we get across?’

  Just then they saw an old man emerge from the cabin doorway. He shuffled out into the daylight and waved at them.

  Leon slapped the partition at the back of the cabin to alert the others, then he opened the door, glanced back down the road the way they’d come to look for any sign of virals. The nearby fishing village was still and silent.

  ‘I think we’re clear.’ He stepped down on to the road. Jake got out too, grabbed a gun and then together they cautiously advanced towards the crumbling edge of the bridge.

  The old man waited patiently for them on the other side of the gap. He wouldn’t have looked out of place sitting in one of those upturned and beached boats to their right, repairing an old net. Except he was carrying a shotgun.

  ‘All right, mate?’ called out Jake.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he replied.

  ‘We saw your sign.’ Leon gestured behind him. ‘Back on the main road.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Leon heard footsteps as the others joined them, spreading out on either side. ‘Kim, Howard, grab a salt-sprayer and go keep an eye out behind us for snarks.’ They turned and went back to the truck.

  ‘This is the “island”?’ said Finley, sounding less than overwhelmed. ‘It’s not exactly Alcatraz.’

  ‘It does the job, young lad,’ replied the old man. ‘Twenty feet of choppy seawater does the job just nice and keeps them pesky little buggers away. As for Sheila –’ he patted his gun – ‘she keeps any troublemakers at bay.’

  ‘Your sign said that we’d be welcome,’ said Leon. ‘Is that the case?’

  ‘Aye. So long as you’re all well behaved and infection free.’

  He nodded, then glanced behind him. Howard was passing Kim a fire extinguisher from the rear of the truck. Keep it cool. They got our backs.

  ‘We’re good,’ he replied. ‘No virals. Can we cross over, please?’

  The old man pinched a bulbous red nose, then scratched at his thick white beard. ‘No infection. Well, that’s good.’

  ‘So?’ prompted Jake. ‘Can we come over?’

  The old man raised a finger to hush him. ‘Two shakes of a lamb’s tail, young man.’ He picked something up off the plastic garden table. Leon saw it was a radio handset.

  ‘Peter calling Home Guard. Over.’

  The handset crackled an answer that Leon couldn’t quite hear.

  ‘We got us some visitors down on the bridge.’

  Another crackled reply. Then the old man cocked his head and squinted at them all intently for a few moments. ‘We got seven of ’em. Two snotty kids. Two scruffy young boys, a big man, an older woman and a scrawny-looking fella.’

  ‘Nice. I think he managed to offend us all in one sentence,’ whispered Jake.

  Leon ignored him. ‘I wish he’d hurry the hell up. We’re sitting ducks out here.’

  The radio crackled again after a moment.

  ‘Guv’nor wants to know if you got any guns with you besides that one?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got a few,’ replied Leon. ‘They’re in the truck.’

  ‘They say they got some guns,’ said the old man. He waited for a reply.

  ‘Please! Can we hurry this up?’ called out Cora. She looked back down the road at Kim and Howard on guard. ‘We’re all feeling quite vulnerable standing out here.’

  Leon looked back. Beyond the truck was the small fishing town they’d driven through. Narrow cobbled streets between buildings that looked weather-blasted and old. Nature, just as it was everywhere else, was doing a splendid job here reclaiming the world left behind. Tall clumps of stinging nettles had sprouted effortlessly from front gardens, window boxes and wheelie bins; even, Leon had spotted, from the seat of an abandoned baby buggy. The buildings with their dark interiors were close enough for them to feel uncomfortable hanging around here any longer than they needed to.

  The radio finally crackled again.

  ‘He says you
lot can come over!’ said the old man. ‘But you gotta hand yer guns in.’

  ‘OK, fine,’ replied Jake.

  ‘But I gotta hose ya down first!’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ hissed Leon.

  Come on. Come on. Come on.

  The old man carefully set the shotgun down on the table. ‘You lot know about the virus and salt?’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Leon.

  The old man bent down painfully slowly and reached for a length of hose at his feet, turned a tap on outside the cabin, then picked up the hose. He sprayed his arm with water. ‘There, just so you can see I’m not a gremlin!’ He aimed it their way. ‘Right, stand still, you lot!’ He aimed high, producing an arc of spattering water that crossed the gap in the bridge. Leon was at the front. He closed his eyes as freezing-cold salt water spattered across his face.

  ‘Good! You seem human!’ shouted the old man. ‘Right . . . you, scruffy lad, you’re next!’

  Jake let out a yelp as the water soaked him. ‘Bloody hell, it’s freezin’, mate!’

  ‘What do you want, warm water and bubble bath? Next!’

  A couple of minutes later, everyone was dripping wet and shivering as the old man slowly turned the tap off and dropped the hose at his feet. ‘Congratulations, you’ve all passed our immigration test!’

  He bent over and scooped up a length of rope and tossed it across the gap to Leon.

  Leon caught it. ‘What’s this do?’

  ‘Have a tug on it and you’ll see, lad.’

  Leon took up the slack and saw the other end of the rope was attached to a wooden beam.

  ‘The pirate’s gangplank,’ the old man wheezed merrily.

  Leon tugged on the rope and the plank slithered and scraped across the cracked tarmac on the far side. Jake and Adewale stepped forward and between the three of them they quickly pulled it across the six-metre gap.

  Leon put a foot on the wobbling plank and shuffled his way across.

  ‘Ah-aaahhh!’ croaked the old man loudly. ‘Welcome aboard HMS Portland, me hearties!’

  The sea sloshed below him in lazy waves that flowed over and around a mound of collapsed bricks and mortar and drew back with a tired hiss. Leon was looking down at a three-metre drop either side of the plank – not exactly deadly, but he’d break a bone or two on that rubble if he did fall. He took a dozen more cautious steps across the juddering plank of wood until finally he was over on the far side.